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If Mario Kart Did Board Games

If Mario Kart was a board game then it would be something oddly like my latest board game purchase Titan Race. It is a mad game full of powers and special abilities and only cost 17.99 which is impressive for how much it gives you. I had hoped to play another game this week at NoBoG but a six player game of Titan Race was to good to pass up and we had a lot of fun.

Titan Race is a game that sees players take control of titans who are racing across a board, our six player game was doing a grand-prix which meant we had three boards to cover that had three very different special abilities. We had the cosmic board which allowed players to roll for extra movement at the cost of a life point, an ice board where players slip and slide, finally we had the lava board that causes damage of players when they pass through the lava.

Each Titan had their own special ability as well as access to more bonus cards that they could pick up by moving through certain points. All this adds up to one crazy adventure and a lot of very tactical decisions. However the first decision is movement and that is decided by the dice, the first players rolls them and players choose in a clockwise fashion until the final player who takes up all the dice and begins the process all over again.

At the beginning of the game the other players were still getting used to the game and consequently they were quite nice in their gameplay. However once they got a hang of it the devious plays came out and the titans started taking damage left right and centre.

One of the players didn’t even make it of the first board before they were taken out which meant he had to sit out a round, at least he could still take dice and mess with people. He was not the only casualty in this game with nearly ever player perishing at the hands of another Titan at one point or another.

In the last game I played of this I died twice before I made it out of the second board so I was happy that I managed to get onto the third one this time before I was taken down by Ewan. It was a bit unfortunate as Andy was nearing victory at the time but luckily I managed to get back in time to team up with Ewan for a joint attack on Andy which took him out of the running.

This gave me a great chance to claim victory but once again the dice were not on my side and left me just one space short of the finish line. It was at this point that another player game out of nowhere and managed to the exact dice that he needed in order to over take me and win the game.

After I had finished packing Titan Race back into my bag I headed upstairs to see what everyone else was doing and whether anyone was up for a filler game. What I found was one of the most dramatic endings to a game of Epic Spell Wars that I have ever seen. There were so many people crowded around this game just watching the events unfold that saw Lewis once again reign victorious and its safe to say that he was rather happy about it.

A lot of the games had ended by this point so we had enough people to do two separate 9 player games of Secret Hitler. I have played it twice before but never at NoBoG and it was interesting to see how it played out. There are two sides to this game which are the liberals and the fascists, the aim of the liberals is to pass 5 of their policies and the Fascists is to pass 5 of theirs. However the fascists can also win if Secret Hitler is elected chancellor after the third fascist policy has been enacted.

Presidents pass around clockwise and it is their job to pick a chancellor but before they can do that, there has to be a vote and that is where you can usually get a lot of information about who is on what side. An elected president takes three policy cards handing only two to the chancellor who chooses one to enact and in our game the first policy was a fascist one but as the majority are fascist policies it is not an unexpected outcome.

The first fascist policy to be enacted let luke check the part alignment of his friend who he claimed to be a liberal. Now he could have been telling the truth but another player checked out the same player Luke had checked out and came out with a different story. This immediately made Luke and his friend supper suspicious and I was convinced that both of them were fascist but Luke did a great job of convincing the other players he was not.

As the game progressed we got more liberal policies out which was great as it meant that we were closer to our victory but it also meant that there was a greater chance of drawing fascist policy cards from the deck. over the next few rounds two more fascist policies came out and players started to get eliminated from the game, we didn’t know for sure but I was certain that the balance of power was quickly going to the fascists.

Secret hitler got so close with both teams having enacted four policies each but by this point the game was all but over. The fascists had eliminated two liberals and had the power to vote for whatever they wanted. To add insult to injury the last vote of the game saw Luke’s friend elected chancellor, a man who turned out to be secret hitler. We may have lost the game but we certainly didn’t make it easy for them.

What was annoying was that I had worked out exactly who they fascists were by about halfway through the game when they all voted against me becoming chancellor for the second time in the game. It was just unfortunate that I was sandwidged between the four of them and that I couldn’t convince the liberals that what I was speaking the truth, especially with Luke on my Left which meant I couldn’t get a word in edgeways for most of the game.

Tonight was a lot different to how I expected it to go but I adapted and got to play two really fun games, even if they were both frustratingly close. Will be interesting to see what happens next week.